What God Gives

October 22, 2015October 23, 20152 Comments

Some may say, God gives you only what you can handle. But in my personal experience I have lived the exact opposite of the well known phrase.

What God gives has always been so much more than I can handle.

There was a time when I believed the old saying and in my times of heartache I pulled up my bootstraps, mustered up my strength and marched on like it was something I could handle.

But over time I have realized in all my handling and mustering God was not giving me what I could handle at all. Instead, God was bringing me to a place where I could find the end of myself. Where my strength, faith and hoped ended is where I found my need for others to come alongside me and hold me up when I couldn’t hold myself up any longer even with the sturdiest of bootstraps.

I found my need for something bigger than myself.

In pain and loss and suffering, God gives us more than we can handle, the weight is too big for us to bear alone.

But when God give us more, God also gives us Himself. In Him, God supplies more hope and more faith than we could ever muster up in our own strength and through His people God gives us so much more love than we could have ever even imagined for ourselves.

This week our family experienced a traumatic accident. My father-in-law, my husband’s best friend, was struck by a car at seven o’clock Tuesday morning.

What God has given us since that moment has been the end of everything we thought we could do in our own strength.

It is amazing for me to think of all the blessings I have personally experienced this week and I know my husband, my mother-in-law and my sister-in-law can testify to so many more personal blessings as well.

God has given us the timing of this accident to happen when my husband was minutes away from where his father was when normally he would have been two or more hours away.

God has given us friends who are willing drop everything, loan their new car, their time and their energy to spend the night with my four young children so I could drive down and be close to my husband in his heavy moments of grief and uncertainty.

God has given us two people who held the elevator for us the same night as the accident as we were running to catch it. They asked us who we were visiting and as we shared our story they shared that their son was in the trauma ICU too from an accident which had occurred the day before.

God gave us them, complete strangers, to whisper the words, we will pray for Mack. We learned their son’s name was Tommy and we whispered we would pray for Tommy too.

I asked as the elevator was closing, because we had gotten off, where they were from and they said St. Louis, a beloved place to my husband and I as we spent our first three years of marriage there while he was in seminary. The couple held the door open to tell us they were saved by a Covenant Seminary student twenty years ago.

As we left them they told us their son was going to be okay, as was the other student from Asbury in the car who wasn’t wearing a seatbelt. In that moment God gave both my husband and I hope.

God gave us that moment. He was the weaver of two completely different stories crossing paths at the same time to give the gift of hope for another day.

God has given me people to pick up tortillas for taco night, friends to sit with my kids while I gave my older child the regularity of volunteering in his classroom and friends to send pizza over because all I can do right now is throw pizza on a paper towel.

God has given us people who will pick up new guitar strings so my husband can play music for his father while he is laying in a hospital bed.

God has given so many visitors at the hospital. So many more than my husband can even count.

God has given us hundreds of people praying across the country for my father-in-law. So many texts, emails, phone calls and messages. More than any of us could keep up with even on our best days.

In these hard moments and in uncertainty, God has given us so much more than we can handle. The burdens and heartache have been too big to bear alone.

But God has also given us more prayer and more love than we can handle.

God has given us more love.

God has given Mack more love. And I believe it is the more love that keeps us going. More love than we can handle. Because love is bigger than burdens and hard places.

If you have prayed for Mack’s recovery, reached out, visited, brought groceries or have been a friend, I personally thank you for showing me how God can give me more burdens than I can bear alone but also more love than I could have ever imagined for myself.

If you are praying for Mack please also pray for Tommy and all the others in the Trauma ICU.

Thank you for praying and for giving more love than we can handle.

Unraveled Church

October 12, 2015October 13, 2015Leave a comment

It feels strange to learn how to “do” church while your husband is in full time ministry. For some people it feels strange to “do” church at all and to others “doing church” feels like an old perfectly broken in baseball mitt.

For me it feels like I have the old cozy baseball mitt but my hand just hasn’t settled into those comfortable places yet.

“Doing” church is something I am still learning to do. And this is where God has me.

There was a time when I would try to settle into those comfy spots like a stepsister forcing her way into a glass slipper. Forcing my hand to make it touch every contour, nook, cranny and seam. I believed if I could just do it better or try to make it fit harder maybe then the doing of church would feel more comfortable.

And then there are times when I haven’t even felt like wearing the glove at all. I saw the glove and I knew my hand didn’t quite wear it well so I hid behind pride, behind shame and even behind the pointing the finger of blame.

The root of pride that I was just too different.

The trunk of shame from who I have been and what others have said about who I am.

And a branch of a pointing finger which bore the fruit of blaming others for a perfect glove which wasn’t quite snug enough.

And now I realize, ten years into being one with someone who is called to lead God’s people in God’s church, that doing church or learning to do church is simply a process. It is a constant unraveling of what you thought you knew from who God is calling you to be. Whether you have a brand new glove or your glove is cozy and your hand feels like it fits every cranny.

Everyone is in the process of learning how to love Jesus more and love their self less.

And God has me in the process of learning how to do church. A place where I know my hand isn’t quite settled into every cozy place and I am okay with that.

I don’t feel cozy in my glove when I sit in the front row on Easter Sunday and one of my handsomely dressed children is eating their boogers. My pride still has me finding my worth in how we look sitting there in the front row.

I don’t feel cozy in my glove when my husband doesn’t share a story just right from the pulpit and the expression on my face shows it. My perfectionist self reveals it’s rolling eyes and my wanting to control rears it’s ugly side.

I don’t feel cozy in my glove when we are adjusting to a service which is thirty minutes earlier and with four kids we seem to be walking into worship late and with wrinkly slacks almost every Sunday. The soil of acceptance and my need for others to see me as “shiny and freshly pressed” seeps into my pridefully drenched roots. Sometimes my heart finds it’s worth in freshly pressed pants.

It is only when I can undo what I have already wound up tightly, unravel what I thought I knew from what is true and start with feeding the roots of myself with faith and belief… this is where I can find freedom.

Dependent roots grounded in the gospel of truth which remind me that yes, I am different, but I am also uniquely knit together and wonderfully made, called specifically to be in the front row with booger eating children for a purpose I don’t quite know the meaning of yet.

A trunk of fresh bark, firm and strong by the Word and His power which reminds me that in Christ, I am a new creation, the old is gone, the new has come and I am more accepted and loved in Christ than I could have ever dared to dream of.

And branches that don’t bear fruit of blame and pointing fingers at others when I don’t feel like I fit in but instead bear fruit of love and service because I realize unraveling this idea of doing church is not at all about me, or anyone else around me. When I pull back the threads of pride I can see clearly that church is about God and calling people from all different backgrounds to love and serve Him, no matter how well the glove fits, in the name of Jesus.

When I recognize that my biggest discomfort about fitting in and “doing” church well actually has mostly to do with my pride (myself) when I point that branch back at me, it is there when I can wear my glove more comfortably.

Even though I haven’t quite completely grow into it yet.

It is there, when I unravel what I thought I knew about doing church from my pride and unbelief that I can be comfortable with just being in process.

It’s not about shoving like a stepsister. We all desperately want the glove to just fit better but instead we should be learning to be more comfortable in the places that don’t quite yet fit. This is where we find faith and belief. This is where we trust that God will grow us in the ways he needs us to grow, in His timing.

We are loved when our gloves don’t seem to fit, our kids eat boogers and we are running late with wrinkly pants.

I will grow into the coziness of the glove in God’s good and perfect timing. Being in process of doing anything is a good thing. God is good and He is at work, we need not shove. He is able to grow us into our gloves even without our shoving.

I am a pastor’s wife, learning to “do” church. I am in process and I am okay with that.

Thursday Night Refresh

September 21, 2015September 21, 20152 Comments

I am very excited to talk bout something we have going on at our church on my blog. I never really talk specifically about church events on my blog but this new ministry is very personal to me and I needed to tell you about it.

This year at North Cincinnati Community Church we will be launching a new division of Women’s Ministry called Thursday Night Refresh.

The first meeting is this Thursday, September 24, 2015 at 7:30pm at North Cincinnati Community Church. I will be sharing pieces of my story this week and speaking in front of a large group of women for the first time.

Thursday Night Refresh is important to me because the purpose behind launching this new ministry is to connect busy women.

Months ago, a friend came to me with this idea to have a meeting for women every six weeks and I was immediately on board. As women get busier and busier it is becoming more and more difficult for them to connect into a weekly Bible Study of Discipleship Group and because women are busy they aren’t able to connect to Women’s Ministry.

I was one of these women. When my husband and I were first married I was a new teacher and if I wasn’t working, I was sleeping. Teaching was so exhausting for me and I did not have the energy to ever give myself 100 percent to a weekly Bible Study.

When I transitioned to being at home with my kids, my busyness changed but I was still busy with four kids in a little less than five years. I tried to get connected to my church’s women’s ministry but is was difficult to get all my babies to Bible Study every week.

I see a great need in women’s ministry to connect busy women with a come-as-you-are, no-prep-needed meeting where in seventy-five minutes every six weeks women can come and connect to other women, hear a story of God’s faithfulness through the testimony of a woman who has hope in Christ and at the end have an opportunity to share prayer requests.

The name.

When the idea of this meeting was given to me, we did not have a name for it. I was even inviting people in the early stages and saying, “but I don’t know what this meeting is called yet.”

Overtime, I just kept coming back to the word, refresh.

I thought back to when I was busy and not connected to a community of women what I remembered was it was consistently difficult for me to ever feel completely refreshed.

Yes, I received refreshment from reading God’s Word and in prayer but there is something even more beautiful and more refreshing when you find your struggles and your stories tangled up in the struggles and stories of other women.

Refreshment comes from community.

I also thought about a webpage and the act of refreshing a page. You know how sometimes you refresh a webpage it takes forever for it to completely refresh? Maybe you have too many windows open or maybe your wireless connection is not as strong as it needs to be to receive a quick refresh.

Women. We have so many pages open. We wear so many hats. Some are mothers, some are wives, some are working, some are up to our eyeballs in volunteering. No matter where we find ourselves, we find ourselves with so many pages open that it is difficult to find refreshment.

I am hoping that once every six weeks you can come to a meeting at our church, shut all your other pages down and connect to community.

We start this week, September 24 at 7:30pm.

All are welcome to join us. You don’t have to be a member at our church, you don’t have to be a member of any church. Just come as you are and connect with us.

The speaker.

The speaker will be different each time but this first week I will be speaking and sharing about how God has changed my life and what I have learned as I have learned little by little to put my hope and trust in Him. I will also share about my current struggles as a woman, wife and mother. I always promise to be authentic and maybe even a little funny.

I hope you can come and find our stories tangled up together along the way.

Don’t forget to share this with your friends. I hope to see you there!

Find out more info at http://www.northcincy.org

The Terrible, Laughable and Humbling Places of Parenting

September 17, 2015September 17, 2015Leave a comment

There are times when you see your kids shine in the same way you shine and you beam with pride. There are other times when your kids demonstrate undesirable behaviors like eat ashes from the fire pit and you call them “you spouse’s child”.

“Look what our kid did” vs. “Look what your kid did” both have very different tones associated with one another around here.

But then there are moments like the one I experienced tonight when the ugly behavior displayed by my child could not possibly have come from my spouse. The humbling moments where the ugly behavior exhibited by my child is no-doubt-about-it coming from my branch of the family tree.

Tonight while I watched an evening television show with my children, one of my sons asked me for some apple juice. I responded lovingly to his request but apparently, I did not return with the fulfillment of his request in the proper amount of time so he began to cry.

He was disappointed with me because “I did not get his apple juice to him in time for him to drink it during a particular part of the show”.

Moments like this can make me frustrated. And tired. But moments like this also make me laugh and feel ridiculous- all of these emotions- at the same time.

Have you ever seen the cinematic masterpiece, Big Daddy? You know when Corin cries in the bathroom because they wasted the good surprise on Sonny?

I am completely Corin. I am a confessed and recovering control-freak-perfectionist lady.

Even as an adult, I often cry when the big surprise is wasted on someone or my drink doesn’t come in time for me to sip it during my favorite part of the show.

My personality was assessed for my husband’s work almost three years ago and the assessor (I remember exactly which assessor) winced when he saw how high of a perfectionist I naturally am.

“Normally people like you like to work alone in the corner,” is what he said. And that is very true of me.

In my regular-self, if I didn’t have the Word of God, The Holy Spirit or the accountability of other tenderhearted Christian women I would be crying in bathrooms all day long about good surprises being wasted and seating charts not working out just the right way.

I am (maybe) six percent recovered with ninety-four percent to go and I have been walking with Jesus for a decade. There is progress but there is so much more work for God to do in my heart as He peels back (oh so many, it’s wince-able how many) layers of control and perfectionist tendencies AND as I do my part of walking in faith and trust that He has begun good work in me and will bring it to completion at the day of Christ.

But it is terrible when I see the ugly parts my personality come alive in my sweet children. When I see the strong perfectionist crying over drinks not being delivered in the appropriate amount of time or how I have to redo the blankets for him because I didn’t smooth them out the proper way.

Terrible. because we don’t want to come face to face with our ugliness

Laughable. because we get it

And humbling. because we know God has been moving us through it

To see your perfectionist heart and persnickety ways being lived out by little lives on your lap is terrible, laughable and truly humbling.

Oh parenting, you are good to me and I am so blessed. But the learning curve is so, so big.

But also so, so good. To see where we have been, where we are now and where God will possibility take us in the future. Us. And those little crying kids who do not receive their drinks in the proper amount of time.

Terrible. Laughable. And truly humbling.

The Crumbs On The Countertop

September 14, 2015September 15, 2015Leave a comment

I am not proud, but there have been moments in my Christian life when I have cried over the dust on my baseboards, the spills on my carpet and the crumbs on the countertop.

Cleanliness is next to godliness and serving a God of order where my favorite things to say about keeping a tidy home.

But something has happened to me.

I thank God because He is before all things and in Him every single thing holds together. Even those tiny crumbs.

What happened to me is something I never would have imaged could happen to me. What happened to me was something that happens to a lot of people, I simply had my fourth child and now I do not have time to care about the crumbs on the countertop.

I saw the crumbs on the countertop just this week and then the dust on my nightstand and the piles of folded laundry sitting out in the laundry room left sitting out and not put away.

I noticed the meal planning board with it’s good intentions but meals which were never made.

I tried to figure out when my life started to unravel from my idol of order and it all comes back to having that fourth child.

I thought about my love of the order and cleanliness and then I thought about my kids. My three sons and that fourth child, my only daughter.

Yes. I am overwhelmed by the constant need for me to tend to something.

But I am thankful.

I am thankful for the gift which God has graciously given to me in having a fourth child.

The gift I needed, where I came to the end of myself and my abilities and ultimately all I had was dependance upon something much Greater than me.

That fourth child, in all her lovely wonder, pushed me to a place where I found the end of myself and the need for a God who is before all things, and in Whom all things hold together.

That fourth child has given me the greatest gift. The realization that I don’t need to have every crumb wiped up and every baseboard completely dusted. The realization that every single moment will not be picture perfect and my hands are more full than I could have ever dreamed.

I see the crumbs on the countertop and although they still make me a tiny bit crazy, thanks be to God for helping me see the other things around me which are more important. The lives He has given to me to love and care for and the ability to let go of the spills, the crumbs and the dust.

That fourth child has helped me see that loving, caring and tending is greater than cleaning or dusting or tidying.

Thank you God for that fourth child, for bringing me to the end of myself and for finding a place where it is not me running this ship, but You, You holding it all together and graciously showing me the way.

Thank you God for the gift of seeing crumbs on the countertop less and being involved in the lives of my children more.

I couldn’t have come to the end of myself without the graciousness of God. I am thankful for that fourth child. Abundantly. Even if I can’t keep the order around here like I wish I could.